GOOD STRATEGY REBELLION

Tag: ukraine

  • Winning Wars With Agile: Fear and Loathing – Revisited

    Winning Wars With Agile: Fear and Loathing – Revisited

    Martyn Rhisiart Jones

    “Logistics is all of war-making, except shooting the guns, releasing the bombs, and firing the torpedoes.”

    ADM Lynde D. McCormick, USN

    Martyn Rhisiart Jones, Córdoba, 3rd October 2024

    Martyn Rhisiart Jones, Marid, Friday 13th March 2026

    In the boardrooms of Silicon Valley and the corridors of Whitehall, the gospel of agility has become a mantra for efficiency and innovation. Borrowed from the frenetic world of software development, where iterative sprints and self-organising teams promise to outpace lumbering bureaucracies, agile methodologies, scaled up through frameworks like SAFe (Scaled Agile Framework), are now touted as universal elixirs. But can these principles, honed in the digital realm, truly orchestrate the chaos of armed conflict? Or do they risk injecting perilous uncertainty into arenas where hesitation can spell catastrophe? This question, once a provocative thought experiment, gains urgency amid evolving threats, from hybrid warfare in Eastern Europe to cyber skirmishes in the South China Sea. Drawing on historical precedents, contemporary military adaptations, and a dash of Celtic scepticism, we dissect whether agility’s allure holds water on the front lines, echoing the resilient pragmatism of Welsh soldiery through the ages.

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  • Trump’s NATO Demands: A Shift to Transactional Security

    Trump’s NATO Demands: A Shift to Transactional Security

    Martyn Richard Jones

    President Donald Trump’s recent comments about NATO do not indicate a call for collective security reform. Instead, they reveal an intensely transactional view of international partnerships. Urging alliance members to assign as much as 5% of their GDP, an unprecedented figure, to purchasing U.S.-made weaponry and military equipment, Trump has once again reframed global security as a business deal.

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  • IT’S POLITICS: Foreign Interference: The Big Lie

    IT’S POLITICS: Foreign Interference: The Big Lie

    Foreign Interference: The Big Lie

    Afilonius Rex, Brussels, 12th March 2025

    “What’s the world’s greatest lie?” the boy asked, completely surprised.

    “It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie”.

    Paulo Coelho, The Alchemist

    The big lie? Many proclaim it, many people propagate it, and many people exaggerate it.

    What am I?

    Correct. External interference, disinformation and coercion in domestic politics.

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  • IT’S POLITICS: From Russia With Dismay

    IT’S POLITICS: From Russia With Dismay

    From Russia With Dismay

    Afilonius Rex, Madrid, 18th January 2025.

    Profound antagonism has existed between Russia and Western Europe since the times of the Czars. Leading roles in this perpetual drama have been racism, imperialism, arrogance, ignorance, personal ambitions and paranoia. The biggest problem in the room is that Russia understands the West too well and that the West is deliberately stubborn when it comes to putting itself in the shoes of Russia.

    There are elements on all sides who are nostalgic about the Cold War and believe that it should be the natural state of things, not just some terrible and painful relic of how not to live in peace, harmony and cooperation.

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